navigating life in my 20s
Hello, everyone! I know Mondays could be hard a lot and like Garfield, many of us hate it. But I also know that bad days in general don’t choose when they’ll pop up. Personally, I’ve had a bad Friday at least once in my life.
So I want to share to you all a lullaby I discovered on Spotify. This is an original by a Youtuber named Kenzie Nimmo. It’s so good and so comforting. Besides, who doesn’t love a really simple and soothing lullaby, right?
Happy Monday, awesome peeps! 💃
We have an overcast sky here and the rain just stopped. It’s so cozy and I don’t want to do anything today. But I got this crazy idea for a blog post and it cannot wait a day more.
Has your thumb ever had its own consciousness and suddenly you pressed send in the middle of typing your replies?
I did. Many times. My thumbs are unreliable. One time, I was writing a blog post using my WordPress app but I accidentally pressed “Publish” instead of that gear icon. Not only that, it got published twice. What the heck is wrong with my thumbs? I had to delete both abominations of a published post and continue writing, grumbling at my thumbs while doing so.
The same goes when I’m commenting on a post and when I hit reply/send midway, I’m like
I want to show an example made by my good blogger friend and inspiring human being Kiya of Flawed Silence.
She didn’t just handle the embarrassing pressed-send-accidentally scenario really well but I could also relate to her a lot. Then a couple of days ago, I found a rather cheeky solution.
Basically, all you have to do is to disconnect your Internet connection while the WordPress app is loading the unfinished comment/post. That’s what I did the last time it happened (which was last Wednesday), it would say error and go back to being a draft. If this happens on your computer, just close the window as fast as you can. Better to start again, I always say.
There you go! This is a completely random and not-so-helpful post but yeah. 😅
And if you can’t help it and it’s already out there, relax bro. Do what awesome Kiya did and coolly embrace your fingers’ clumsiness. There are far graver mistakes to make. So don’t worry, at the end of the day, you’re still alive. 😉
Happy typing, awesome peeps! 💃
Hello awesome peeps! I haven’t been able to write any post for the weekend because I had the Headache of the Century. Paracetamol or any pain-relieving med didn’t work. So I applied vaporub on my head and across my scalp. Yep, I was so desperate to end the migraine that my hair smelling like Vicks didn’t even matter to me anymore.
And lo and behold, the morning after, the headache was gone! Thank God for Vaporubs.
But that’s not the story I want to share with y’all today. Today is Monday which means I have a kinda motivational story to share with you.
I’ve been staying in my grandparents’ house for two months now. But I’ve only noticed this plant last week.
See back when I was in elementary, this certain thorny flowering plant that I don’t know the name of was almost dead. Like probably four leaves and it’s kinda wimpy. I was surprised my mom brought that from her school. She planned to put it in front of the house but it didn’t bloom so she just left it in our sideyard to eventually die.
Then I saw something white in the middle of the pot. I thought it was a paper my sister threw or something but no. It was a flower. For some reason, I was so transfixed with this one white flower.
How could something dying even bloom?
I kept staring at it. At one point, my mom saw me and told me to be careful with the thorns. But you know, kids do the exact opposite. So I’d try to reach for that flower but I could never lift my hand with no scratch. They stung, even the leaves have sharpy thingies. And after so many attempts and too many little cuts, I gave up. The flower still there, guarded by the thorns.
And one day, I thought of watering the plant everyday, when I arrive after school. It was the first thing I did when I get home: grab a little bucket full of water and pour it onto the plant. My grandpa would ask me why I was doing it when it was obviously dying. And I always answer the same way. I just want to see if there would be more flowers.
At one point, I was too caught up in preparing for high school and then getting busy in high school that I forgot about the plant. But it was still there. During typhoons when we get the occasional flood, during dry season, and after so many Christmases. The plant was there.
You see, I think we have gone or will be going through something that the plant had. A wilted moment. The time when we will be our lowest. And oftentimes, we act bitter and thorny with the people around us. I would know.
I’ve thought plenty of times that I have been at my lowest. But then something else happens and there’s a new lowest in my life. And during those times, I wallow myself in bitterness and self-pity and dozens of “you wouldn’t understand.”
But recently, I came to realize that the people who love you? They might have seen one tiny flower somewhere within you. That’s why they didn’t give up on you. And that’s a start.
So I guess what I’m trying to say here is: embrace the love given to you. Know that even if you think you’re suffering from your problems alone, someone hasn’t given up on you.
So find the eleven-year-old Kate that will pour water into your wilted phase. That sounds cheesy but you know what I mean. 😉
I think I was already in my last year in high school when I noticed the plant again. It looked so different from when I saw it the first time. And I could still remember thinking, “Yay it bloomed!” And now, two years after, it still is.
Happy Monday, awesome peeps!🌻
How did he/she/they help you?
Hey guys! Caitlin at A Little Daydreamer started out The Ultimate Blogging Challenge and I plan on participating as much as I can. Today’s the first day and it’s all about getting to know each other better. Basically, you create something that represents yourself and lets people get to know you better. Here’s mine.
These…are my stuff.
Not everything I own but some of the things that I think could represent me well: Art.
I love art so much I can probably write an ode to it. Just give me a few weeks.
I started out tracing Disney princesses when I was around seven or eight. You know, like you put a thin bond paper over a certain printed illustration and just trace the lines? Yep, that’s how I started. And oh man, I boasted my traced works like they were Mona Lisa.
When I started drawing without guide, I drew girls with really huge eyes and long wavy hair and really long legs. It was a style I got from my bro’s nanny. And when someone pointed out my drawings’ legs were too long and they look like messed up Bratz, I started reassessing my works and fixing what needs to be.
Then in fifth grade, I discovered Youtube. There were tutorials on how to draw anime girls and anime hair and anime bodies. I was a sponge trying to absorb everything.
This summer I’m trying to learn watercolor and *sigh* all of my works are junks. You can’t see it but the drawing book underneath the tubes and pens? That’s my practice book with all the distorted and failed attempts at painting flowers. But I’m still trying to draw them better.
I tried landscape-ish paintings. And while they look kinda okay in this picture (thanks to VSCO), they’re still a little messy-looking. You see that white thingy between the trees in the forest painting? That’s supposed to be a white wolf. But then my aunt saw it and she was like, “Is that a cat?”
And I said, “No! That’s a wolf.”
“Well, are your pine trees too small or your cat-wolf too big?”
“It’s a dire wolf spirit,” I muttered sheepishly. “It’s supposed to be big.”
My first attempt at a galaxy print in my drawing book looked like a mixture of red, blue and violet ground meat. It’s horrendous but I’m still trying.
And that letter K? While I love art, I’m not really a craftsy person. Took me one whole week to finish and used up all the masking tape. Should’ve created a template instead of winging the measurements.
So before I further embarrass myself, I guess what I’m trying to say here is: I’m nowhere near as great as those dudes and dudettes in Saatchi or DeviantArt. But I can be. Someday. Hopefully.
See, I don’t believe anyone started out in life as a fully fledged expert. We were all noobs at one point. I’m still a noob in watercolor and crafts. And my anatomy still sucks. But I’m trying to be better every day, learning things through my mistakes while celebrating the little achievements.
And I guess that’s also how I take on life: just trying to be better every day.
So yeah.
My name is Kate and I’m a work-in-progress. 🎨:)
So. It’s my birthday today. Would you look at that, I’m now 18. Hurrah.
It’s not that I’m glum about it, don’t misinterpret. It’s just that…I guess as you grow older, birthdays just becomes this small detail in your life that people around you feel obliged to be happy about. Or I dunno, maybe that’s just me…
Holy heck, it’s my freaking birthday. Why am I so melancholic? Arrrggh. Keep it light-hearted, Kate. Srsly. This whole Comprehensive Exam preparation is really getting on my nerves. -_-
What I am happy about are these:
DO YOU SEE HOW CUTE THIS IS?
And there’s this…
I dunno how to feel with this… (And yeah, yeah. I said screw anonymity but it applies to me. Not my friends.)
Anyway, I remember watching Jenna Marbles’s 29 Lessons I Learned in 29 Years and was inspired by it thinking, “Hey, I wanna do that on my 18th birthday!”
Because there’s nothing better than reflecting back on the path you’ve taken and comparing where you’ve been to where you are now. Right? And also, I don’t feel old. And I wanna feel old today (see #16 below for why) so looking back on how I was for the last 18 years was a pretty good idea. So yeah. Here are 18 lessons I learned in 18 years.
Funny how this is Katie and that’s my nickname. via Google images (source) Read the article if you want to. It’s pretty fun.
Big-headed as it sounds, I can easily say that I’m a person one can’t describe in one word. That’s most likely why I have these hoards of different topics to discuss on this blog. I tried talking about just one main topic in another blog once. That blog didn’t live long. It’s still there somewhere in the depths of the web. Not active but merely existing. (Whoa, I feel like I just described Kronos.) Single niche blogs doesn’t work for me, although I read TONS of them.
It’s the same thing with my self.
I don’t see me as just one type of person. I am so many things that can’t be coherent in one single word. So imagine the difficulty I face when filling in those “About Me” in my different accounts in different sites. I have to think of something that’s short but could summarize the basics of me. It takes me, at most, a few hours. That About page in this blog? Yeah, it took somewhere around 45 minutes to an hour. But still.
Then after a few “About Me” filled out, I learned something: I could never summarize myself. It’s not possible.
And the same goes for other people. I truly believe that no one is just a nerd or just a jock or just a popular girl at school. You don’t need to be a tomboy just because you’re a girl who is “one of the guys”. Go act something childish that you love to do even if you’re supposed to be an adult. Like collect toys or read comic books.
And let’s face it: the labeling? It’s not just others’ fault. I see all these people who have let themselves be absorbed by their labels and I feel sad and frustrated at the same time. Why can’t one just embrace his entire being instead of that one thing that people thinks of first? That person is just making his own wounds deeper by not becoming more than just a label.
We all know, in courtesy of Shrek, that ogres have layers. But the thing is, we have layers, too. The difference between us and Shrek (other than the complexion and ears) is that there are times when it’s not easy for us to see those layers.
I’m a blogger, an avid reader, movie and music junkie, frequent Pinner, less frequent Tweeter, art enthusiast, probably an accountant-to-be, and, most of all, hopefully the first unicorn rider. And I still have more in myself to discover. My tombstone has to be as tall as the Washington Monument for them to completely summarize who I am. (Imagine hundreds of Washington Monuments in graveyards. Burial would have been nasty expensive. No wonder we have eulogies.) And so does everyone else.
So how about you? Who are you?
(And unless the answer is “Human” or “Person” or “Girl/Boy/Man/Woman” try not answering with one word.)